How do I remove the glow from particles
As mentioned by CharlesL,
that glow is caused when the particles are rendered with Halo selected in Particle settings > Render:

 

From the wiki:


  Particles may be rendered as:
  
  Halos (for Flames, Smoke, Clouds).
      Meshes which in turn may be animated (e.g. fish, bees, …). In these cases, each particle “carries” another object.
      Strands (for Hair, Fur, Grass); the complete way of a particle will be shown as a strand. These strands can be manipulated in the 3D
  window (combing, adding, cutting, moving, etc).


To render a surface, you can change the rendered type to Object (to render a copy of an object in place of the particle) or Group (to randomly select the object from a group of objects)

You can change the halo settings by adding a halo material to the emitter object and changing the Material setting to the appropriate value in Particle settings > Render

The other options are


None 
fairly self-explanatory, do not render particles
Line 
Render a line along the vector of the particle
Path 
Used with hair particles
Billboard 
Render 2D planes at a fixed angle to the camera